Jul. 16, 2013

Two University of Michigan professors are hoping to raise $200,000 to develop new thrusters for small satellites like this one, called cubesats, to allow more exploration of space. / University of Michigan

Detroit Free Press Education Writer

How to help

A pair of University of Michigan professors are hoping you are willing to pony up some cash to help them be on the cutting edge of space exploration.

For the first time in U-M history, the professors are using Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website, to help raise funds to fund their research — which they hope will allow them to explore space via cubesats.

The cubesats are small satellites, about the size of a loaf of bread. They cost significantly less than a normal satellite, but have some drawbacks — chiefly, they have no propulsion system. The U-M duo hope to change that.

Right now, cubesats are launched on rockets, which place them in orbit. The cubesat just drifts and eventually falls into the earth’s atmosphere and burns up.

Benjamin Longmier, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and a propulsion specialist in the Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Lab in the college of engineering, and James Cutler, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Michigan Exploration Laboratory, are teaming up for the project. Cutler’s team has launched three cubesats into space since 2008.

They are seeking $200,000. As of late Tuesday afternoon, they had raised $30,911..

By using Kickstarter, the professors are hoping to speed up the process for getting projects up into space. It can take up to 10 years for a project to be funded through the federal government’s grant program, which requires a lot of small steps along the way. It can limit the number of projects a professor can work on in his professional career to just a few, Longmier said.

“I don’t want to say I don’t have any patience,” he said. “(But) developing technology is moving so much faster. We’re trying to short-circuit that process to develop these faster.”

The pair also see this funding method as a way to allow the public to become more involved in their project and learn more.

As for the project, the $200,000 will cover the cost of the hardware for the cubesat and pay for graduate students working on the project.

They are going to be developing new thrusters and a new fuel. They will use liquid iodine, or distilled water instead of a gas. They need to use the liquid to store more fuel in a smaller space.

The thruster will vaporize the iodine or water and then superheat it into a plasma state, according to a news release from the university. A plasma is a gas that has been energized to the point that some of the electrons break free from their nuclei, allowing the ions and electrons to coexist. It is often referred to as the “fourth state” of matter. That plasma will then be directed through a “virtual nozzle” created with magnetic fields, pushing the spacecraft in the opposite direction.

“The problem with the spacecraft we currently build is they don’t move,” Cutler said. “And there are some very interesting places that we’d like to go.”